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Acronyms are for people with much better memories.
Friday, 22 November 2013 12:17 pmI don't do communities well--I wipe out my social reserves pretty quickly, or get totally wrapped up in a new interest or distraction, or lost in work or a project. Sometimes things pass me by, especially when those things sound like segments of the community coming up with new ways to piss off or alienate other segments of the community.
(That's part of my love/hate relationship with fandom. "Let us gather over our shared love of this show, so we can immediately tell you that if you don't love it the way we love it, you're not really a fan, because finders-keepers: we discovered it, we own it!" But I digress.*)
Growing up bisexual in Redneckville, not only did I worry about straight relatives judging me, I worried that I wasn't actually bisexual--maybe I was gay and just couldn't face it. After all, it's socially acceptable for girls to be bisexual, since bisexuals aren't real and will eventually pick a side, but lesbians are just for porn. Was I deluding myself and clinging to the safer label?
(Nope.)
It turns out the problem wasn't straight relatives, but smug bisexuals with patronizing "I fall in love with people, not gender" remarks. You know the remark: it comes from assholes who don't so much believe in gender-irrelevant snogging as they believe that everyone is really bisexual and just lying to themselves, but not the smug bisexual! She's better than everybody, gay or straight, because she doesn't even see gender.
What's that? The best response to bigotry that condemns a group for their sexual orientation is bigger bigotry that looks down on all other orientations? Right.
So, yeah, the family didn't judge me, but obnoxious college girls did, and fuck them with a rusty chainsaw for it.
Anyway, in my time avoiding communities because, ugh, people (or maybe it was always this way, and I didn't notice because, ugh, people), it seems a nice division has coalesced: bisexuals vs. pansexuals! People who are attracted to either gender, vs. people who are attracted to the whole smorgasbord of sexuality--male and female, cis and trans, intersex and genderqueer and non-binary genders ahoy!
Brilliant! Like 'homosexual' and 'heterosexual', 'bisexual' does seem to define itself by the traditional gender dichotomy, whereas 'pansexual' sidesteps that in a nicely inclusive way for folks so inclined.
Also, selfishly I admit, it's a nice fuck you response to that smug line. "People, not parts? Oh, you're pansexual. That's a completely different orientation, honey, and you remember that 'different' doesn't mean 'better', don't you?" Now go poop in someone else's sandbox, bitchlette.
And in 20 years, when the pansexuals have finally gotten tired of the poop in their sandbox, I hope we'll be looking at a division of bisexuals, pansexuals and smugsexuals--people who aren't attracted to genders at all, just to their own self-satisfied perception that they're better than everyone else.
Another term that's new to me and which I hope takes hold (if it hasn't already): heteroflexible/homoflexible, for folks who lean mostly one way or the other, but aren't averse to hopping the fence for someone. I like the inherent acknowledgement of sexual fluidity there, and the refusal to fret over those labels that drove me nuts so many years back.
* "In fact, as fans, we made it popular and therefore the creator works for us, so really, we're more creative than that guy who had the idea and did the actual work. We're the real creators here." Okay, so it's more a love/stab-your-face relationship.**
** Yes, I understand that fans play with the things they love in part to see themselves represented in it, which can be especially empowering in issues of race, sexuality and gender. I've also seen entitled assholes who've only ever played with someone else's characters and never written an original word dismiss writers as nothing but glorified typists who had better get with the program because 'fandom made you and we can break you', and seriously, fuck those assholes.
(That's part of my love/hate relationship with fandom. "Let us gather over our shared love of this show, so we can immediately tell you that if you don't love it the way we love it, you're not really a fan, because finders-keepers: we discovered it, we own it!" But I digress.*)
Growing up bisexual in Redneckville, not only did I worry about straight relatives judging me, I worried that I wasn't actually bisexual--maybe I was gay and just couldn't face it. After all, it's socially acceptable for girls to be bisexual, since bisexuals aren't real and will eventually pick a side, but lesbians are just for porn. Was I deluding myself and clinging to the safer label?
(Nope.)
It turns out the problem wasn't straight relatives, but smug bisexuals with patronizing "I fall in love with people, not gender" remarks. You know the remark: it comes from assholes who don't so much believe in gender-irrelevant snogging as they believe that everyone is really bisexual and just lying to themselves, but not the smug bisexual! She's better than everybody, gay or straight, because she doesn't even see gender.
What's that? The best response to bigotry that condemns a group for their sexual orientation is bigger bigotry that looks down on all other orientations? Right.
So, yeah, the family didn't judge me, but obnoxious college girls did, and fuck them with a rusty chainsaw for it.
Anyway, in my time avoiding communities because, ugh, people (or maybe it was always this way, and I didn't notice because, ugh, people), it seems a nice division has coalesced: bisexuals vs. pansexuals! People who are attracted to either gender, vs. people who are attracted to the whole smorgasbord of sexuality--male and female, cis and trans, intersex and genderqueer and non-binary genders ahoy!
Brilliant! Like 'homosexual' and 'heterosexual', 'bisexual' does seem to define itself by the traditional gender dichotomy, whereas 'pansexual' sidesteps that in a nicely inclusive way for folks so inclined.
Also, selfishly I admit, it's a nice fuck you response to that smug line. "People, not parts? Oh, you're pansexual. That's a completely different orientation, honey, and you remember that 'different' doesn't mean 'better', don't you?" Now go poop in someone else's sandbox, bitchlette.
And in 20 years, when the pansexuals have finally gotten tired of the poop in their sandbox, I hope we'll be looking at a division of bisexuals, pansexuals and smugsexuals--people who aren't attracted to genders at all, just to their own self-satisfied perception that they're better than everyone else.
Another term that's new to me and which I hope takes hold (if it hasn't already): heteroflexible/homoflexible, for folks who lean mostly one way or the other, but aren't averse to hopping the fence for someone. I like the inherent acknowledgement of sexual fluidity there, and the refusal to fret over those labels that drove me nuts so many years back.
* "In fact, as fans, we made it popular and therefore the creator works for us, so really, we're more creative than that guy who had the idea and did the actual work. We're the real creators here." Okay, so it's more a love/stab-your-face relationship.**
** Yes, I understand that fans play with the things they love in part to see themselves represented in it, which can be especially empowering in issues of race, sexuality and gender. I've also seen entitled assholes who've only ever played with someone else's characters and never written an original word dismiss writers as nothing but glorified typists who had better get with the program because 'fandom made you and we can break you', and seriously, fuck those assholes.
